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Watching 'Til Death and Do Not Disturb recorded Wed. 9/17 from KTTV-MPEG4 (satellite delivered). Both shows had very slight audio errors throughout, just a slight gurgle/blurp while people were talking every so often.

Opinions expressed by me are my own and do not necessarily reflect
those of DBSTalk.com, DIRECTV, DISH, The Signal Group, or any other company.

I live in Simi Valley (Los Angeles local feed). I was watching a football game on NBC on Saturday and we were having a rare rainy day. I heard a dripping sound in my right ear (frequency between drips about 2 seconds) and figured it was coming from outside from the rain. I muted my sound to see if I could isolate it. Gone . . . Unmuted and dripping is back. Hmmmm, sound is coming from the television. So, I switched channels and the dripping went away. OK, transient problem with NBC somewhere in their system. No biggie.

Last night, during the debate, same dripping sound on NBC. I noticed my wife had turned on the ceiling fan. Ahhh, that's it!!! The ceiling fan is causing interference. Turned it off. Still get the dripping sound. I run my HR21 sound thru a Yamaha AVR using optical. So, now I'm figuring something must be going on with interference with the AVR. Oh well, I'll figure it out later.

So, I went upstairs to my bedroom where I have an HR20 connected to a Kenwood AVR via composite connectors. It's on a separate dish (don't ask) with no MS. I select a recording of Heroes to play back and - guess what? - dripping sound in my right ear. I put on headphones just to be sure I wasn't imagining this. Later, I turned on Leno and dripping continued. Switched to Letterman - no dripping.

So, it seems isolated to NBC (haven't found another channel to do it). Two different receivers, two AVRs (connected with different cable types), two dishes and the problem gets recorded (same watching a recording vs. watching live). I did a search and found no one else with this issue.

Having a problem with NBC and ABC. Don't watch much on the other broadcast channels, so don't know it there is a problem there too. Sometimes the dvr records fine, other times I have a gray screen. Called CS, told me to re-set, but it is still doing it. I have HR-20-700.

Heroes HD. Issues with DD left channel pops on ch 393 last two weeks in a row.Pops are rhythmic about every five seconds

im having the same problem with most NBC shows using CH4. i hear it on Chuck, Heroes, and Late Night with Conan. sometimes i dont hear it for a while but it might be because ive gotten used to it.didnt notice it on the office or saturday night live thursday weekend report.

all HD locals are pixelated again tonight... been happening on and off for almost a year now.

Laker game was horrible on channel 9 on Wednesday. The picture must have cut out a handful of times and or the sound. I think it is 9, but I have always noticed during the game that the pictures will go out of focus for a few seconds and then slowly become clear to an HD picture..strange. My signal is pretty much 80's on 99 and 103c, so I think it is either channel 9 or Direct. I have had issues on the other locals as well and has been an issue since I have had Direct since April.

I live in 29 Palms, ZIP 92277, and receive all of the LA Local Stations, including KCET CH 28 on DIRECTV. I have yet to see any HD programming on this channel.
The station is listed as "LA 28" on the Guide but the station logo shows KCETHD on the screen. I realize that the other local HD channels are listed as KNBC, KCBS, KTTV, etc.
I have bars on both top and bottom and on the sides.
Is it just me or is anyone receiving HD from KCETHD?
Thanks.

Thanks for the reply.
I did as you suggested and it shows: LA 28 not KCET.
I have reset with the red button and reset with the unplugging but still
get the LA 28.
Maybe I'll send DIRECTV an e-mail and ask for suggestions.
What shows are you viewing in HD on KCET?
Thanks again.

Anyone noticing a "hot" picture on KNBC HD programs? I have DirecTV and recorded Ellen and NBC4 news and noticed (especially on Ellen) that the video was "hot" - faces are too bright. The problem isn't noticeable on any other HD broadcast that I've viewed so far, and it's happening on multiple TV's.

FOX - KTTV (11) very bad this week when watching American Idol. At least 5 times during the Tuesday show the video when all black, lost the DD feed and the audio made a funny booooinggggggg sound. Each time it happened it lasted for about 10 seconds.

I do most of my "local" recordings off-air on 2 old HR-10's and sometimes do back up recordings of the same shows off of DirecTV local feeds on HR-20's. I have been tracking signal dropouts when they occur, and checking the same area of the recordings from the "other" source when they do. In EVERY case, there is a glitch in the off air MPEG2 (source) that corresponds to the MUCH WORSE freeze and/or dropout in the DirecTV MPEG4 local feed. Since DirecTV "receives" the same local signals as I do and then converts them to MPEG4 for retransmission, the glitches are not FROM DirecTV, but the MPEG4 encoders do not handle data glitches in the source well at all! MPEG2 signal recovery off-air is usually a second or 2, but the corresponding MPEG4 recovery can be 5, 10 or even 20 seconds. Can the MPEG4 encoders be set up to handle data errors better than they do now? I don't know. It would be something that would be worth DirecTV looking into.

I do most of my "local" recordings off-air on 2 old HR-10's and sometimes do back up recordings of the same shows off of DirecTV local feeds on HR-20's. I have been tracking signal dropouts when they occur, and checking the same area of the recordings from the "other" source when they do. In EVERY case, there is a glitch in the off air MPEG2 (source) that corresponds to the MUCH WORSE freeze and/or dropout in the DirecTV MPEG4 local feed. Since DirecTV "receives" the same local signals as I do and then converts them to MPEG4 for retransmission, the glitches are not FROM DirecTV, but the MPEG4 encoders do not handle data glitches in the source well at all! MPEG2 signal recovery off-air is usually a second or 2, but the corresponding MPEG4 recovery can be 5, 10 or even 20 seconds. Can the MPEG4 encoders be set up to handle data errors better than they do now? I don't know. It would be something that would be worth DirecTV looking into.

DirecTV is well aware of this issue. But if you think about it, the glitch from the encoder that takes the MPEG-2 signal and re-encodes it to MPEG-4 will ALWAYS be worse than the glitch in the MPEG-2 signal. The MPEG-4 encoder will always take a finite time to recover when the MPEG-2 signal becomes stable again so the glitch will be longer.

DirecTV is well aware of this issue. But if you think about it, the glitch from the encoder that takes the MPEG-2 signal and re-encodes it to MPEG-4 will ALWAYS be worse than the glitch in the MPEG-2 signal. The MPEG-4 encoder will always take a finite time to recover when the MPEG-2 signal becomes stable again so the glitch will be longer.

The MPEG-4 encoder should just encode the raw frames that it "sees". Errors in the MPEG-2 stream should not inherently make for "even worse" MPEG-4 output. The decoder should generate frames just as you would see them on your own STB. The MPEG-4 encoder wouldn't know the difference between "good" frames and bad ones.

I do, of course, agree that a small amount of data loss will have more impact on MPEG-4. But Scott is saying errors in the "source" MPEG-2 are triggering bigger problems with the MPEG-4 stream. That should be something that is fixable.